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botShots is an expanding and evolving resource for artists, students, educators and enthusiasts of both art and robots.

Featuring the 'Best-in-Show' of the Robot Art world in any media, we keep the editorializing to a minimum and strive to let the work speak for itself. Our statement on quality was made by it's inclusion in our collection.

Each image is linked to a larger version for more detailed examination and a link to the website of each artist featured is also provided.

The amazing Mr. Nemo Gould is at it again. Crafting stunning sculptures out of found objects and recovered materials and continuing to blaze a trail in the world of RecTech, kinetic sculpture, robot art, recycling and creative expression.

(If I am gushing it's because I really love his work - and he's a really nice guy too, which is always nice...)

His works inspire wonder and fascination from materials that, before he got his masterful mits on, were destined to crowd our growing landfills.

His well trained eye sees what the rest of us mistake as worthless trash and his brain instructs his hands to fashion his fantastic visions, elevating the previous scrap to powerful statements of beauty and value, where none existed before.

His art informs us that our aesthetic tastes are fooled by broken metal and a bit of rust. Once polished, joined and re-configured, it's aesthetic worth is unmistakable.

I have been less prolific with my posts of late... they will be starting up more regularly again soon...

Until then, some brain candy....

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.Leo Tolstoy(1828-1910)

Award winning rock and roll poster artist Emek draws much of his inspiration from the culture, and of course counter-culture, of his parent's sixties. He himself missed that decade, although you'd never know it by looking at a lot of his art. With both his parents artists and sharing, not only their 'creative' and 'talent' genes but also, their music and other influences, he was uniquely suited or perhaps destined for the work he does now.

This helps explain the 'psychedelic' side but not exactly the 'industrial' and 'robo-mechanical' aspects to many of his works. This side of him seems more a mystery, as to it's origins, yet he makes no secret of his love of melding the mechanical with the organic, crafting surreal and fantastical images from his rich imagination and infusing them with his, often ironic, sometimes sardonic, sense of humor and social commentary.

'Evolution - Go Back'

'Coheed and Cambria' - Gig Poster

'SpeakerBot/SpeakerGirl' for Erica Badu

Original Artwork for Red Hot Chili Peppers

Original Artwork for Tool

Album cover for Les Rita Mitsouko

Album cover for Les Rita Mitsouko

'Last Picnic'by Emek

(Posted with Artist Permission)

Part 3 will follow (in a future feature) and contain additional works from Emek, including an animation and in-progress illustrations as well as a preview of an upcoming feature on Emek's father, also an artist interested in robots and machines in art.

This is in fact a quote from Paul Hoc's very own web page at Object Graphik.Paul Hoc is not a robot. I humbly beg to differ. Not because it sounds like it should be printed on a T-shirt or the rally-cry of the obsessed fans of the 'real' Paul Hoc, an American painter of the 1950's but because Paul Hoc is, most definitely, a robot.

Why do I make such a claim, when even his designers/creators say differently?

To quote pioneering roboticist Joseph Engelberger "I can't define a robot, but I know one when I see one." (which incidentally is why there is no definition of Robot supplied on BotShots).

Created and designed by POB Technology and the artists at Object Graphik, of France, for the 2008 Saint Etienne International design biennial, Paul Hoc physically traverses paper and canvas to create intricate, geometiric, illustrations born of digital code and mathematical algorithms.

While Californian artist Reuben Margolin does not exactly make 'robots', he is (forgive me) making waves that have implications and applications in both art and robotics.

His creative impulses include drawing, painting, furniture and even rolling-vehicle making, yet it is his mastery of kinetic sculpture, natural materials and motions, analogue controls (in a digital world) and theatrically dramatic presentations, often hypnotically captivating, that required his inclusion in this gallery.

'Magic Wave'

This is one of the biggest and most complex examples of kinetic art in the world. The 'Magic Wave' is an aluminum grid suspended by 256 cables and the overhead mechanics contain 3000 pulleys, 5 kilometers of steel cable, and 9 motors. In all more than 50000 parts. It was a collaboration with the staff at Technorama Swiss Science Center and displays wave characteristics of Wavelength, Amplitude and Frequency.

Video of 'Magic Wave' from the opening show at Technorama

'Round Wave'

Detail 'Round Wave'

Video of 'Round Wave'Video by: Michele Orlando

'Spiral Wave' by Reuben MargolinVideo by Michele Orlando

(Posted with Artist Permission)

The following video for MAKE: TV is a fascinating profile of Reuben, his work and his process. I found it not only compelling but, more importantly, inspiring - as an artist and as a lover of art. It is included here in the hopes it has the same effect on others.

This robotic humanoid from Toyota can, arguably, play the violin. Now I want to see ten more of these paired with a few of the percussive pianos from LEMUR's 'gig' at the National Gallery of Art. Things are really starting to get interesting now...

Peter Pochylski likes his robots retro and made of wood. So that's exactly how he builds them. Large or small, these warm, wooden, constructs are infused with a charming humor and unique, age-worn, style.

Like characters from the earliest science-fiction films, many of Peter's pieces seem to tell a story or, at least, play their part in some larger, grander, drama.

Not surprising, perhaps, considering the clear influences from Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Alex Raymond and even The Jetsons, that seem to inform his work and direct his steampunk/retro-future style.

Guillaume Reymond, the French-Swiss award-winning artist, has stepped out of the traditional box for his art project series Transformers. Outside and up, in fact. Way, way, up. Requiring the use of a Zeppelin to fully realize, a collection of vehicles (from Garbage and Fire trucks to Buses and Ambulances) are carefully positioned, revealing massive, transformer-like, robots in parking lots and fields. So far there are three in the Transformers series. One and Two are featured below.

Transformers#3 is only available at the artist's website. (By the artists request, so as to leave you something to discover on your own.)

... of Robots and Donuts. San Fransisco based Eric Joyner, illustrator, painter, instructor and robot dreamer, has been honing his craft for over twenty-five years. He works a nostalgically retro style which evokes memories of a time since past, yet a time that never quite existed either. A Surreal, alternate time, when Marlowe hunted for the red robots Hideout or when smoke-filled auditoriums held Friday night Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robot boxing bouts.

I haven't even gotten to the donuts yet. Like a kid in a candy store, many of Eric's worlds are filled with sweet treats of surreal proportion and mysterious function, infusing a warm charm that instantly comforts and delights. Yet all is not quite as sugary sweet as it first seems. Just under the icing lies undercurrents of violence, depression and tragedy. The robots, it seems, are not always happy.

He has also inspired me to expand on the materials, images and information so far included on botShots for each artist. While it was always envisioned as a (mostly) visual blog/on-line art gallery, botShots has begun to evolve and develop into a growing resource (and hopefully, authority) on Robot Art. As such, I will begin to expand the written component of botShots over the next while, possibly including some 'critical' essays and trying to include additional educational and reference resources. Coming soon...

'U R What U Watch'(or The 4 Pornbots Of The Apocalypse)

Primarily a Rock and Roll poster artist, Emek has won numerous awards and created cover art and posters for bands including Neil Young, The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, B.B. King, Bob Marley and Radiohead. He surprised even himself when he was asked to provide some of his 'robot' work, at just how many he had done and how influential a subject matter it obviously is to him.

Part 2 of this feature will include a selection of posters featuring robots and will follow in the coming days. Part 3 will contain additional works from Emek as well as a preview of an upcoming feature on Emek's father, also an artist interested in robots and machines in art. Watch for these coming soon...

The Art of Robotics

Perhaps no other mechanical device has inspired artists to create, in every imaginable media, while also being so easily accepted as an art form by the art establishment and loved by the community at large.

It is not really an obvious pairing. Robots and art. Machines are not often thought of in that way.________________________________

So what makes Robots so different?

The BabbleBot

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ArtBots - Robots in, and as, Art

The Robot has been a muse for Artists for over a century. From paintings, drawings and animations, films and videos, sculptures, music, furniture, design elements of architecture, clothing and even food.

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RecTech

RecTech:A term I coined to describe - The fusion (or use) of Recycled or Reclaimed material(s) with Technology or into Technologically inspired, aesthetically pleasing, pieces/objects (functional or not), usually for the purposes of Art. (whew)

It is, in fact, a moral imperative, an aesthetic and a philosophy.

Can we justify the creation of 'new' art whilst we continue to over-consume, and therefor produce 'waste', beyond our capacity to reasonably and safely contain it?

Should we be sending tons of our 'instantly-obsolete' techno-gadets and aged computers to fashion third-world mountains of hazardous waste?

Is everything we throw away - garbage?

Is it all no longer useful?

Is it without potential to become, at least, aesthetically pleasing?

Clearly (and luckily) vision, creativity, talent and passion, say differently. It may just be what saves us.

botShot Resources

The following botShot resources are available for you to make use of including two brand NEWcustom Widgets ('Recent Posts with pictures' and a 'Slideshow' version) that you can add and feature botShots great content on your own blog or website.

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Wiki-Definitions

Android: a robot designed to look and act human.[1] The word derives from ανδρός, the genitive of the Greek ανήρ anēr, meaning "man", and the suffix -eides, used to mean "of the species; alike" (from eidos, "species"). Though the word derives from a gender-specific root, its usage in English is usually gender neutral; the female counterpart, gynoid, is generally used only when the female gender is a distinguishing trait of the robot. The term was first mentioned by St. Albertus Magnus in 1270[2] and was popularized by the French writer Villiers in his 1886 novel L'Ève future, although the term "android" appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature humanlike toy automations.[3]

Cyborg: a cyberneticorganism (i.e., an organism that has both artificial and natural systems). The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space.[1] D. S. Halacy's Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman in 1965 featured an introduction by Manfred Clynes, who wrote of a "new frontier" that was "not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between 'inner space' to 'outer space' -a bridge...between mind and matter."[2] The cyborg is often seen today merely as an organism that has enhanced abilities due to technology,[3] but this perhaps oversimplifies the category of feedback.

RetroFuture: Retro-futurism, retrofuturism, retro-future or retrofuture, terms combining "retro" and "futurism" or "future", can refer to two distinct concepts: A style of design or art or a sociopolitical ideology.

Retrofuturistic design is a return to, and an enthusiasm for, the depictions of the future produced in the past (most often the 1920s through 1960s), both in science fiction and in nonfiction futurism of the time, which often seem dated by modern standards.[1] The ideology combines retrograde sociopolitical views with techno-utopianism.
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